If I wanted to find what regions said, say, “aunt” as “ant” vs. “awnt”, where would I look?
Thanks
The link on that page to the index of other dialect survey maps on the same site is broken. See here for 121 more such maps.
For future reference, search terms like “dialect map” “dialect survey” “dialect survey map” and “isogloss” may be helpful.
Oh, I recall now - “With isogloss winders you can roll right down/ in case there’s a change in the weather/”
The spread for aunt is a lot odder than I would have guessed.
There are 7 main pronunciations and an Other category.
- aunt
a. as in “ah” (9.62%)
b. as in “ant” (75.15%)
c. as in “caught” (2.77%)
d. I have the same vowel in “ah”, “caught”, and “aunt” (2.52%)
e. I pronounce it the same as “ain’t” (0.58%)
f. I use [/] when referring to the general concept of an aunt, but when referring to a specific person by name. (6.64%)
g. I use when referring to the general concept of an aunt, but [/] when referring to a specific person by name. (1.84%)
h. other (0.88%)
(11713 respondents)
It seems to me that in certain areas, the local African Americans will pronounce it “awnt” and white Americans will pronounce it “ant.”
My dad grew up near Lafayette Louisiana and is of Cajun French descent. He doesn’t have much of a Cajun accent as he left that area when he was about 8 years old. But there were a couple of aunts that still lived out there and he always referred to them as “Ain’t —.”
When he referred to the general concept of an aunt, he pronounced it “Ant”.
I find it amusing on those dialect maps the way people pronounce and say things in Louisiana (see “Neutral Ground” )
That was what I was looking for. I’d noticed the differerence and wondered if perhaps it were a southern thing, brought north when blacks moved into the cities a hundred years ago. But it’s simply urban. The only one that’s strictly southern is “ain’t”.